"It Was A Deer In Headlights Moment": Japan Dumps Most US Treasuries Since May 2013

With the December monthly TIC data due out this week, bond traders will be closely watching if the selling of US Treasuries by foreign accounts, and especially central banks, which as we have repeatedly shown for the past several months has hit record levels...

... will persist, with a focus on whether China's near record selling of US paper will persist.

However, this time the surprise may not be China, but its nemesis across the East China Sea, Japan.

As UBS notes, Japanese investor appetite for developed market overseas bonds, and especially US, was a big story during the first seven months of 2016. However, since then interest has waned. Weekly flow data underscores how Japanese investors sold ~¥4 trillion of overseas bonds from the time of the US presidential election to the end of Jan-17. Last week the Japanese government released more granular data for the month of December which highlights a number of notable developments.

Most importantly, while December saw the largest overall net selling flow of overseas bonds since Jun-15, this was entirely due to offloading of US Treasuries – other developed bond markets on aggregate actually saw modest net purchases. Indeed, while Japanese investors bought German and Australian paper, US Treasuries were sold to the tune of ~¥2.4 trillion (~$21bn) in December, the largest net selling flow since May-13.

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